There’s more than beans inside these cans
Council to use baked bean tins for spying – Metro.co.uk: What is it with all these cameras everywhere? I’m starting to think that Brits have a fetish for them.
A council is to hide cameras inside baked bean tins and brick walls to catch residents who put rubbish in the wrong bins.
The covert surveillance has been ordered by Ealing council to target ‘enviro-criminals’ an Evening Standard investigation has found.
The cameras cost around £200 each, are triggered by movement, and email pictures back to a council control room.
They will be used to catch fly-tippers, graffiti vandals, those who leave out black bags when they should not and let contents spill out onto the pavement.
An Ealing spokesman said: ‘To catch vandals and enviro-criminals, cameras disguised as anything from tin cans to house bricks will email images to the council’s CCTV control centre.
Doubleplus good brother!
George Orwell would be proud.
I for one welcome the baked bean overloards!
Well, let’s play a little devil’s advocate here. Having a little experience with national/international security companies, I know that really obvious cameras used for CCTV end up being stolen along with everything else in a smash-and-grab heist. That’s why many systems either use disguised or relatively inaccessible cameras.
Need a good reason or two to extend their use? Well, I was involved in a discussion, yesterday, about identity theft. In the US, right now, the latest trend is ID theft brokers paying junkies to steal a neighborhood’s worth of mail in one shot. Usually prying open the back of those delightful community mailboxes the USPS requires to make delivery more “efficient” – for them at least.
They’re one time hits on unalarmed hardware. But, a neighborhood watch program with a few CCTV installations might put a crimp in that. Obvious (and secure) CCTV as prevention or hidden to help catch the thugs.
Brian, are you watching Clockwork Orange, again?
“They will be used to catch fly-tippers”
Is this the UK version of cow tipping?
@4, Who watches the watchers? Seems to me that the guy watching the CCTV cameras would an ideal cover job for an ID Theft Broker.
It’s about time these vicious enviro-criminals who can’t sort their garbage into the proper colored bags got what they deserve.
whats the difference between an enviro-criminal and an eco-terrorist?
One of em lives in the USA
If you put a camera in one of those stash holders, I mean “diversion safes,” that some companies sell – http://tinyurl.com/36khsq for example – you could find out who stole your dope.
Note I said your dope. Not mine. I don’t have any, never did, never will, don’t believe in that stuff, nope. And you won’t find a counterfeit liquid wrench can sitting on the tool shelf either. Nope.
if an area is to be under surveillance, why not make the cameras as discrete as possible?
#7, to answer your question: usually sedentary underachievers. sure, some have potential for advanced criminal activity, but remember that the lot of them watch crappy television for a living. (i wonder what they do when they get home?)